Written by

Megha Satyanarayana and Ann Zaniewski

Detroit Free Press Staff Writers

While the state continues to make improvements in child welfare, too many children in foster homes are still being subject to abuse, a child advocacy group said in federal court today.

The New York-based Children’s Rights and the Michigan Department of Human Services met in court for a periodic check of reforms mandated by a lawsuit filed in 2006 on behalf of the thousands of children in the state’s foster care system. A 2008 consent decree that called for a complete overhaul of the system was amended in 2011, and Wednesday’s hearing was a reflection of the first complete reporting period under the new agreement, January through June 2012.

“This system has made major strides from the system we brought suit against in 2006,” said Sara Bartosz, the lead attorney for Children’s Rights. “But safety still needs to be looked at.”

Data discussed at the hearing found 269 children were abused while in foster care settings during the six-month period, and of those, more than 100 were in the care of family members. The proper licensing of family members who take on children for relatives was also discussed, as more than 1,500 children were in homes of family members who weren’t properly licensed by the state. Bartosz said family is often the best place for children whose parents are being investigated, but that not every family member is the best choice as a parent. Licensure ensures proper visitation and safety checks, she said. Within the system as a whole, she said, children are not getting enough visits from state welfare workers, and timely investigations of abuse are still lagging behind.

“It’s hard to get ahead of yourself when you see a child for every day of the week being a victim of child abuse while in foster care,” she said. “Clearly, we can’t be satisfied with that.”

But DHS Director Maura Corrigan was praised by both Children’s Rights and Judge Nancy Edmunds for taking on a system that was in complete disarray at the time of the first consent agreement. Since then, Corrigan said, the state has launched a centralized hotline for child welfare issues, redistributed caseloads and hired hundreds of social workers to fill gaps. She said they are inching up in dealing with child safety issues.

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A large-scale push to recruit foster parents through faith-based and other communities lead to 1,316 new licensed foster parents during the six-month period. She said the state has broken records in getting children adopted.

And, the department has also undertaken a massive reorganization and is on track to implement a better computer system that will allow case workers to track and record the progress and movement of children within the system.

“I think this is a remarkable feat for the state,” said Corrigan, who wants the state to be out from under the suit in 2014, but noted that other states under similar decrees have had trouble doing so.

Judge Edmunds agreed with the findings on both sides.

“It’s really remarkable how much progress has been made. This program was in terrible shape when the suit was filed,” she said. “It would be foolish to not recognize areas that still need a lot of work. I don’t think there’s any real debate that child safety was the number one objective of the litigation in the first place.”